


Ringer for a Debt

by couqhdrop



Category: Notre-Dame de Paris | The Hunchback of Notre-Dame - Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29271930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couqhdrop/pseuds/couqhdrop
Summary: Madellaine Demiglisten, a low-income University student living in 2050 has always loved the tale of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. She picked up the half-forgotten novel in sixth grade and never put it down. So, when she's given the opportunity by her professor to go to 15th-century Paris for study, promised a full pardon from her debt if she stays in the past for three months, she's bewildered and enamored when she finds out that Quasimodo was not just a man of legend. He had been real.Though Victor Hugo wasn't entirely reliable in his retelling of the bell-ringer's tragic fate.
Relationships: Phoebus de Châteaupers/Esméralda | Esmeralda, Quasimodo/Madellaine
Comments: 29
Kudos: 15





	1. Prologue: Tea-Stained Pages

**Author's Note:**

> NEW STORY AYYEEEEE
> 
> Is it sad that I thought of the plot for this in the shower?  
> Anyways, it must be noted that Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame does not exist in this universe. That would be quite strange considering our leading lady is part of that film franchise. Nope, here, it's just Victor Hugo's novel and a few old black and white films.

_"When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he fell to dust."_

No matter how many times Madellaine's glossy eyes scanned the yellowed, frayed pages of her most esteemed novel, her hot tears never failed to blemish the ink of the paragraphs that had formulated her very childhood. The tale of Notre Dame de Paris, a basilica of years long past compressed into the pages of a book that nobody else in her time bothered to remember. She remembered every line, every word, retained every breath of her beloved Quasimodo, the 1482 myth that was rumored to permeate the renounced, dust-caked bell towers that no longer rang for Paris. 

Who needs to exert such strenuous time when amplified speakers could toll the Catholics to Mass?

"Oh, _Quasimodo_ ," Madellaine squeaked, watery femme-enchanted vocalization of her grief draining out the sounds of her tea kettle screaming out to her.

She truly couldn't afford tea, not with her crushing student-debt, but it was the one thing that made the reading of The Hunchback of Notre Dame even better. It was the only combination of forces that could pacify her from her nearly fatal chronic fatigue. 

Madellaine got to her feet and grabbed her glass phone, treading to her small kitchen which was haunted with thick clouds of steam.

"Alright, alright," she shook her head, convoking the touchpad that would turn off the chrome smart stove and allow her ears to catch a break. Nobody used tea kettles anymore, most preferred just to drink water infused with berries that imparted them the gift of unparalleled energy or have their drinks delivered to them by delivery-driving services. Madellaine didn't like using such applications, for they never seemed to get her order the way she requested it, and she'd much rather see exactly what was being put in her drinks. She turned on her phone, blinding white screen searing through her retinas as she asked it to perform one of her favorite antique 2000s songs, one that was approaching fifty years old in the year 2056.

_"Smile! No one cares how you feel,_

_Be vicious, vain, and vile_

_Everything's yours to steal if you'll just smile,_

_Have you no dignity?_

_Have you no sense of style?_

_You'll never be pretty until you smile."  
_

She clasped the handle of the rusted over kettle, shakily pouring her cup whilst harmonizing, hoping that she wouldn't be overheard by her fellow dormmates and tantalized for weeks on end. 

_"Smile! No one cares how you feel._

_There's a world to beguile._

_You can make this world kneel if you'll just smile._

_Always the best disguise. A license to defile._

_Everyone you despise will die, so smile."_

By the time the music had hushed and withered into the sound of her feet pitter-pattering amongst the floors of her apartment, she had already taken a few sips of her hibiscus-lemon tea. She set it down on her carpet, sprawling out and flipping the novel back to the first page.

There was something about the simplistic 200-year old tale that left the girl hexed, always enticed into reading it over and over until she had wasted hours of precious time into the characters she already knew better than herself. She exhibited the bell-ringer in her bones, pictured what he must have looked like thousands of times in her mind, wondering if the man would ever like her if he were real. There was no found evidence to suggest such a man did happen to walk the Earth at one point, but Madellaine liked to imagine that he did, only with... a better ending. That poor, misunderstood man deserved more than he had gotten, and her heart broke for him each time the last of the pages were re-read. Quasimodo had truly been born at a wicked time for his malformations. Of course, there were still close-minded people in the mid-twenty-first century, as there would always be, but with all the racial reformations, body positivity, and LGBTQ+ acceptance, she knew that his environment would have treated his heart better now than 1482 had. _Much better._

_"Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago to-day, the Parisians awoke to the sound of all the bells in the triple circuit of the city, the university, and the town ringing a full peal."_

* * *


	2. Que Sera, Sera

The Euthanasia Coaster.

Original concept design for the irrevocable journey of a human's life commenced in 2010. Julijonas Urbonas, a Ph.D. candidate at the Royal College of Art in London sketched up a hypothetical steel coaster ride intended to take the life of suicidal spirits who wanted to have fun before dying. At 10g, no human would be able to withstand its 500-meter descent, let alone the seven inversions that heralded afterward. The Euthanasia Coaster was explicitly designed to carry twenty-four passengers, all of which would be dead once the coaster veered to an eerie halt. But the ride wasn't intended to ever truly exist. 

2040, the first official coaster was raised up from the ashes of a suicidal homeland called Japan. The Japanese people had always dealt with the reoccurring culmination of yearly suicidal statistics skyrocketing, but once 2030 had come to pass, the cases became more and more severe. Violent, grave... _disturbing_.

The coaster was made for those who would not be swayed from taking their own life. Encouragement of such acts was never what the people intended, but after so many longspun years of misfortune, of mourning families staring at mutilated remains of their loved ones, they knew that there had to be a much more amicable way for these souls to be granted peace. The numbers didn't go down, no matter how much treatment had been ordered in daily Japanese life. It had gotten more detrimental. They appeared to discern there was no way to stop them. So they gave a cleaner and even more enticing ulterior option.

The Euthanasia Coaster would kill its patrons through prolonged cerebral hypoxia. No gore, no carnage, no misery. Just a ride in an amusement park and nothing more. At the top of the first steep stretch of track sat a steel terrace. The coaster would arrest its journey for two minutes to ensure that no rider that changed their mind wouldn't have an option to back out. Passengers who wished to step off and live another day were welcome, but if one decided to wait out those minutes in the coaster car, there would be no turning back. 

Not _every_ neanderthal could suborn their way onto the coaster. No, one must be psychologically and physically assessed to be imparted a ticket to die, a slip of paper from a doctor, psychiatrist, or even in some cases a therapist could be the only exchange to the ticket operator, no money necessary. After all, it would be a bit sick to profit off of the deaths of hapless souls, right?

People with terminal maladies also hopped in the queue for the ride. They supposed they'd want to go out begetting an enjoyable time, and not suffering in hospice care. Cancer inmates that had no hope and especially folks with the last dribbles of COVID-19 rode, for they wanted to shed the planet of such a tribulation, whether they would die from the ailment or not. The rules were so austere about the criterion to ride to assure no needless casualties, but most people who wanted to ride got their way.

Madellaine had always figured that the line to the coaster would be rather interesting... human beings who knew they would be dead before the remnants of the day splashed over the fluctuating boundary of Earth and Heaven itself, where they hoped they would be headed to next. It was... sad, that the coaster was so prevalent, and Madellaine Obsidian Demiglisten knew that she would _never_ have greenlit such a contraption if she had anything to do with it.

After all, it had purloined away from her the gallantries of her very mother.

Madellaine latched onto Quasimodo, whoever he may have been or may not have been, for this reason. His story was the first time she felt even content after she had voted to abandon her to ride the coaster. She had told the callow girl that she was just ensuing on a holiday to have fun, but she never returned. It was only later that she discovered the very reason why.

Madellaine's father had perished before her own birth and Sadie, her mother, had been bequeathed this baby, a thing to care for on her own as a single, impoverished mother. When she had sojourned to take her own life, she transferred the little blonde girl to live with her eldest daughter, Ethel Feldspar Demiglisten. Being seventeen at the time and emancipated from her troubled household, Ethel had no choice but to take her little, ten-year-old sister in with her. She ultimately warmed up to it and occurred to love Madellaine as her own. They both had one thing in common and that was the loss of their own parents, the abandonment of their mother, and that was all they had left.

Quasimodo's parents had forsaken him too... he would understand, right?

Perhaps it was juvenile, almost unhealthy to restrain such a fictional man so close to her heart, but she almost didn't care. He made her happy, conducted a simper onto her cheeks that had felt the haste of thousands of unruly tears. Madellaine looked up to his fortitude, for she knew she'd never be worthy to perceive it for herself. 

As she timidly patted her footwear along the hallway, Quasi's tale clutched close to her bosom, she felt herself being cruelly shoved to the ground. She cried out, her book circumnavigating from her hand's cinch, and her nimble eyes wandered upwards to see none other than... _ugh._

_Crynn._

"Oops!" he mockingly drawled out his American dialect, which Madellaine would have found captivating in France if she were not so detestable of the teen who stole her belongings; "Sorry Obsidian!"

"Only my friends call me that, Crynn," she fizzed, but before she comprehended what was happening, she saw him seize her novel, and she responded as though he had taken away her lifeline. 

"Give that back, American!" she hollered, "That's mine!"

"The Hunchback of Notre Dame," he read, rather leisurely for his age, "How _precious_."

"Please, give it back, Crynn," she whimpered, working, and failing, to get the book back.

"Nobody reads this _drivel_ anymore, Obsidian," he sneered, "It's falling apart! In fact, one could just..."

_Rip!_

_"NO!"_

"Oopsie!" he giggled, shredding the yellowed pages to tatters, snowing on Madellaine as she watched in objection. Torrid teardrops skimmed down her cheeks as his demolition of the book left her paralyzed, bones wracking with barren sobs, core busted into pieces. He launched the spine at her, and all she could do was let out a feeble whine.

"Get with the times, wontcha?" he tittered, clasping her hair and fixing to snatch her amulet, the malachite amulet swaying from her nape that her mother had given her, but a voice rampaged aloft his intentions and extorted a shout from the young man.

"HEY! Get the _hell_ away from her before I kick your little ass!"

He was gone in record time, and Madellaine would have turned to thank her savior, but all she could do was gawk at the cadaver of what had been her solace, her serene support, splattered all over the floor. 

"Oh, Obsidian..." Ethel susurrated, knowing how much that book had meant to her, "I'm so sorry that little asshole ruined your story..." 

Being twenty-seven, Ethel was of no age to be on campus, but she was her sister's professor, Sarousch's secretary. She principally took up the job to be nearby her sister and make certain nobody hurt her, but it seemed she had been too late to protect Madellaine's most prized possession.

"T-Thanks, Eth..." she whispered, body shaking as if she had lost a loved one.

"Y'alright?" she asked, "He didn't hurtcha, did he?"

"No..." she closed her lids over her outpouring from her cornflower irises. Her sister snaked an arm around her.

"Aw, Siddie..." Ethel's gunmetal eyes met her sister's, "We'll getcha a new one. I'm sure you can find one in the library, kay? Want me to take ya?"

"I..." she picked up one of the slivers of paper, the only remaining word upon it being ' _Quasimodo_.' She cradled it close to her heart, plucking up the corpse of the maligned book and padding it in her duffel bag, "Yes, please..."

* * *

"Heya, Miss Spills," Ethel smiled benevolently, her citygirl intonation apparent throughout every tremor of her voice, "Do ya happen to have a copy of The Hunchback of Notre Dame?"

"My!" the beloved university librarian snickered, though not in a malicious fashion, tucking a wisp of her stillblack hair behind her ear, "That's an oldie. I'll look for you."

The library seemed to be a capsule in time, like a bomb shelter preserving the likes of personages long past whilst the rest of the world advanced at hyperspeed. No computers, no modern tech, no touchpads or screens. Just walls and walls of books, eras of the inventions of thousands of pen names, thousands of tales and cosmoi of escapism to realms of hydrae, princesses and knights, gardens of luster ochroid, memories of amour. But none glistened as bright as Notre Dame. No book would quench her thirst for adventure like Quasi's tale had.

"I'm so sorry, dearie, but I don't seem to have it anymore," the woman frowned, slipping her glasses onto her stout nose, "But I may have it in soon."

"Alright..." Madellaine smiled half-heartedly, "Thank you, Miss Spills."

"Call me Spilly, dear."

Before the sisters could counter, a drone was heard over the intercom, and Madellaine recoiled in irritation.

"Madellaine Demiglisten, Azurine Vinyl, Asenath Creed, and Seneca Rivera. Report for individual assessment."

"Ya betta get ta class!" Ethel gave her sister a brief embrace, "Afta work maybe we can go to the bookstore? Look some more?"

"Sure," Madellaine gave her palm a snug squeeze, "See you later, sis."

"Seeya!"

As Madellaine strode away from the library, she notified that she had somewhat creased Quasi's name in her palm. She leveled out the paper and peered at his name. Quasimodo.

And she smiled.

* * *

"Whoa," Asenath Creed, a psychology major, studied her blonde peer's downtrod expression, "You're not carrying that book around, Obsidian. Where is it?"

"Crynn destroyed it..." Madellaine mumbled.

"That little dick," Seneca, a business major, sibilated, "If you want, I'll kick his ass for you."

"It's alright, Sen," she huffed, "My sister and I are going out later for a new one."

"Does the library not have it?" Azurine, a communications major, rustled in her demure voice.

"Nope," Madellaine shrugged, "But I'll be fine until then."

"If I was you," Asenath began, "I'd just let it go. I mean, you've already read it a million times."

"It means too much to me," Madellaine attested, "It's not the story... it's the book itself. It's Quasimodo."

"Someone's in love," Seneca chirped in an abrupt tone, "Even though he was supposed to be, like, really ugly."

"That doesn't matter," Madellaine shook her head, "You wouldn't understand..."

_"Demiglisten! Report for individual assessment."_

* * *


	3. Sagest Fire

"You wanted to see me, sir."

Madellaine had to do some... _controversial_ feats to preserve her scholarship at such a prestigious academy. Professor Sarousch was quite the _ladies'_ man, and when he summoned her into his office after her first failed semester, she strolled right back out the sliding doors as a woman. It wasn't something she was expressly proud of, nor anything she'd share with her sister, but it had kept her grades soaring and her future a steadfast current. Now that she had graduated into her senior year, she hadn't needed to rely on devaluing her honor for her studies and her focus hadn't needed remedying. She had been prescribed Adderall, which kept her wits honed and allowed her to study efficiently. Much to Sarousch's chagrin, she began to cycle at a low A in his class, and _nevermore_ discoursed with him one-on-one again.

"Come here, sweetheart."

"Please, don't call me that, sir."

"This is the third paper you've written about fifteenth-century France, hon," he slipped the article along his glass-encrusted mahogany desk, "You seem to enjoy learning about it, hm?"

"Yes, sir..."

"Quite a specific area in a specific time, though," his glasses dossed atop the crook in his nose, "Tell me why?"

_Why does he want to know? If he thinks I'm lifting my skirt for him, he's mistaken..._

"Well..." she sloped up her black nylon stockings and mitigated out the ripples of her uniform's organza skirt, "I-It takes place right before the Protestant Reformation... I just find it... interesting."

"You're obsessed, kitten," he snickered, brontide utterance tapering off of the interminable, yet claustrophobic walls, "Say, would you be interested in learning more?"

Her vitals were being broiled, submerged in the simmering stigma that enflamed the tissues and blood in her stewed duodenum. She did not like being called such offensive pseudonyms, such intimate nicknames that reminded her that he had seen every trace of her. She had been so youthful, been so stupid...

"I would, sir..."

The man used his forearms to push himself off of his chair, almost too forcefully, and it made the girl jump. The alliterations of his shoes scuffing the waxed floor were almost too loud, but Madellaine put up with it. He checked to assure without a doubt that the door was locked snug, and he drew the curtains, swallowing the classroom in amaranthine darkness as the sun made its pitiful attempts to penetrate through the thick woven tresses that hung between the outside world and the unsuspecting student.

"Seeing as though your academic future here at the academy is hanging by a thread because of your debt, I think I can offer you a prospect to help that you couldn't refuse."

"I-I'm not interested in being intimate with you again, sir," she shook her head as ringlets of her untameable blonde hair seemed to flatten under such stress, "I'm sorry, but-"

"No, you silly girl," he shook his head, resting his fingertips against the surface of his desk as he leaned in closer, "Not this time. You've heard rumors about the newest projects being made here? The ones regarding quantum realm simulations?"

"Ah... Yes, my sister, Ethel has been working on that project. Though she won't tell me anything too close in detail..."

"Yes, a talented young lass," he smiled, "Well, then, you'll understand the minimum of what I am about to discuss with you. There's a need to find a test subject, a guinea pig if you will, to be subjected to a three-month-long simulation of sorts to any point in time long past. Travel to the future isn't possible yet, but it could be if we find someone willing enough to take note of the experience."

"You're saying...?" 

"I'm saying that since you have quite the knack for French history, not to mention you are in debt to us here and you seem to have no _other_ plans, you might be a viable candidate to be a test subject."

Madellaine felt her arteries clog up with thick resfeber, tangled up into knots up into her throat. She didn't know what to say...

It was a _perfect_ opportunity to stand witness to marvelous sights, to see what Parisian skylines looked like hundreds of years ago, to see where Quasimodo would have lived...

But three months? Alone, in an unfamiliar timeline, without her sister and the regular leisure of the runty traces of modern technology she still used?

Nuances of agonistic fear stung her, too, knowing that she was existing in a world where this was even _feasible_. Developments of such lambient little portals, if one could even call them that, to worlds long since rendered to be antiquities, were only made possible by God knows what.

Snags in the fabric of space-time, made possible by outlandish things such as rotating black holes or wormholes, could be folded in on itself, allowing temporal points to repeat and keep the body at will, she supposed, though she figured asking for an explanation would have been like asking Tom Cruise to speak about Scientology. 

"Me, sir?"

"Oh, yes," he smiled, "What do you say? Three months in your favorite time period in exchange for your debts to be wiped clean."

"Sir, I..." she gnawed on the skin on her lips, "Learning about something is different than being in something. Will... will I be safe?"

"I would never have asked a student to do this if I didn't have faith in their safety, Madellaine," he finally took a seat once more, and she scooted backward upon reflex, "You'll be able to walk about, eat, sleep, and even communicate with others, though your physical form will be an illusion. The one thing I'd say to look out for will be glitches. You would have to keep out of sight of people if your vision distorts or goes blurry because your physical form will most likely begin to waver."

"I... I don't understand. So I'd be a hologram? What if I bump into something or someone? They'll think I'm a witch!"

"No, no. You will be a hologram of sorts, but you'll still have mass at the same time. You'd be there all the same, but you'd be stuck between two worlds, and since the technology isn't completely polished, there will be a chance you'd run into connection issues."

She didn't see anything... undesirable about the prospect. No more debt, a surreal history lesson, seeing Notre Dame before the fire... Though, would this be a turning point? Or would it be just another simple school project? Could anything really come of this? 

She supposed that she'd have to find out, then, on her own.

"I... suppose I see no harm in it," she slumped down in her seat, "Though does it have to be for three months?"

"To assure all the boxes on the checklist are scratched off, yes."

Thinking about what could go wrong was much like scratching at a scabbed-over wound. It did no good to the skin and prompted coccineous pain, but there was no overcoming the need to see and feel the sting of the briny air against the cracked flesh.

Madellaine, as much as she'd like to be, was not clairvoyant. She had no way of knowing what could happen and was in no way very impulsive, though she felt agreement succiduously sparking along her parched tongue.

Sarousch's words were frigus, though comforting all the same, and she trusted him at the very least as her teacher to keep her safe.

"I... Alright, I'll be willing to help in any way I can."

"Perfect. I'll just need to have you sign this contract of your consent."

Cutting against the corners of what seemed to be such a convoluted arrangement, a simple booklet of stapled inked documents found their space in front of the girl. She picked up the pen iced from the air-conditioned classroom and paused pointedly.

_Is this smart?_

The tip of the ink pen wavered just above the dotted line as she pondered what to do with it. She felt the stiff metal ballpoint scratching along the paper, the fluctuations of the letter 'M' coming conscious, and then 'a' and then 'd'...

The next thing she knew, she dispatched the signature with a flourish, and all she could do was gawk at it.

This was real.

_This was real._

* * *


	4. Flares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have a couple of new things posted to my DeviantArt. They're stupid lmao, they don't have much to do with any of my fics, but they are related to Quasi and Madellaine.

"Ethie..."

"Surprise, kid!"

Madellaine's fingers clinched the sleek frames of her new book, savoring each gratifying angle and crevice before hauling the thing to her heart.

Her novel... _The Hunchback of Notre Dame._

She was due to depart that very next day, and over a few frothy cups of cider, her sister managed to fill the empty ducts in her heart with something that would seem pathetic to any outsider.

She'd at least have this to help her through such solitude. Her enthusiasm was as if she'd never read the thing before, and though she could easily transcribe her memorization of every word, every breath of those pages herself, having it close to her again made her feel less alone.

Surely she'd be so lonely in 1490... So lonely. But she agreed to help, and the pros would surely outweigh the cons, wouldn't they?

"Oh, Ethie..."

"I know how much ya like that book, sis," Ethel closed her arms around her sister, the hard-cover book sandwiched between the two Demiglisten women, and Madellaine felt a streak of uncouth warmth along her cheek. _Damn,_ she was whining over a _book_.

No... she had Quasi back. Her imaginary... friend? Was that too far?

"Thank you..."

"I'm sure gonna miss ya," Ethel's citygirl accent sure didn't work in tandem with her softer-than-light voice, but Madellaine found it charming. Many hadn't the faintest clue that they were sisters, not with Ethel's svelte champagne hair with creamy prism-colored undercurrents, silver and gold piercings in her nose, lip, and her revealing, nearly _exceedingly_ risque wardrobe. Madellaine looked like a small mouse that traveled with a tigress among campus, her only true friend, her sister Ethel.

"I still can't believe this is real... I wouldn't do it if I didn't have faith in your progress on it."

"Heh," Ethel trilled her acrylic fingernails against the table, "Yeah. I neva thought I'd be a parta somethin' like that. Ta see you try it out is an honor, squirt."

"You..." Madellaine dwaled in her thoughts, dysphoric as all hell would be, "You think mama would be proud?"

Ethel physically recoiled and set her glass down, "Yeah... I dunno. She neva showed either of us anythin' worth rememberin'."

The erratic flux of acid in Madellaine's gut made her a little dizzy. Her sister was right. The most Sadie had ever taught her daughters was Ethel's deep-rooted trust-issues, their collective psychological trauma, and Madellaine's daily dose of Clonazepam. 

It really wasn't so bad when she was small. It was just Ethel, Sadie, and Madellaine's pet frog named Tape. 

Ethel had been seven when her baby sister was born and her father perished. She hadn't the true chance to form an emotional kinship to her childhood, instead, she learned how to cook herself pasta and grilled cheese, learned how to work young and provide for her family, learned how to decipher the garbled hodgepodge of her mother's deferred rent. The death of her father left her mother desolate and barren. Vacant. She was like a living, breathing statue. Sadie scarcely worked, barely did anything around the house, and so it fell entirely on Ethel to feed and bathe her baby sister. 

Madellaine's earliest memories consisted of strife. Her mother and sister screaming at each other, bickering like school-children. She remembered all too well how loud a mother's smack could ring through their dilapidated apartment. She remembered hoisting herself up onto a step-stool and reaching her stubby arms into the freezer to fetch her sister ice when her skin glazed over with purples and dingy greens. She never had a visit to the pediatrician, never knew what it was like to see the dentist, and when Sadie had beaten her in her suppressed rage, she had to just let her wounds pacify. Calling 112 wasn't smart. Sadie couldn't afford to pay for any medical bills.

Ethel had disappeared from the household, if one could even call it that, as soon as she was old enough to be emancipated. When she left for the city, Madellaine stepped up to the plate. She never condemned her sister for leaving. Not once. In fact, she knew that they were better for it. 

When Sadie never came back one day, Madellaine and Ethel could finally be free.

But why did freedom hurt so bad?

"Hey," Ethel smiled, "What do ya say to a little bit of a makeover? Ya know, to boost your confidence?"

"Huh?"

"No offense, Obsidian, but... you're in college and you dress like a grade-schooler."

Madellaine smiled sarcastically, "I'd rather not give any guys around here any ideas."

"Aw, I'll kick any asses that think they can touch ya," she snickered, "Besides, ya don't have to dress like me. Just... maybe add some more color? What's your favorite?"

"My favorite color?" Madellaine felt prickled with confusion, "I suppose I don't have one."

"Aw, nonsense," Ethel swept some of her sister's hair from her eyes, "Think. Blue? Green?"

"I like green..." Madellaine muttered, almost in a bashful fashion.

"Aight, then. I'll get ya a nice new outfit, kay? One you can wear tomorrow that'll help ya fit in?"

"Alright..." Madellaine smiled, "Thank you, Ethel. I love you..."

"Awh, I love ya too, kid! Now hurry your ass up and get dressed, we've gotta get a move on."

* * *

Madellaine felt so agnothesic about strolling about Paris, 2050, in such onerous corsets, modest underlayers, and long frocks. She looked like something out of a portrait at the Louvre, and though she would admit it looked as if she played a part in where she was going, she still felt out of place when onlookers gazed at her. 

Since when was Paris so hot?

Though she didn't dress like her sister, she wasn't averse to wearing clothing that kept her cool. She liked to wear skirts, no higher than the knee, tanks, and crops, especially in the summer. Her sister, however, would wear full-on _garters_ and short skirts in public, and though she'd never shame Ethel for what she liked, she didn't understand the appeal.

Besides, with creeps like Crynn about, she didn't need any extra unruly attention than she already got for being a woman.

"How on Earth did people live like this?" she nearly laughed, keeping her book close to her chest. Her corset was so tight that it almost seemed as if her bust had disappeared, which she didn't complain about. Though, it was unmanageable when it came to getting in a breath.

She knew that as soon as her debt was terminated, she'd work hard for a car. The sun annealed her flesh, or whatever was left of it to be revealed. 

The rest of the march was a blur, and the next thing she knew, she was tucking her book cautiously in her bag, so that she didn't have to watch yet another be destroyed. The Hunchback of Notre Dame was her cockaigne, her sanctuary, and if she didn't have it whilst in such a foreign period of time, she didn't know how she'd be able to keep herself calm.

The building was so... quiet, and she found herself striding solivagant to Sarousch's office. There wasn't a typical class schedule on Sundays so that perhaps explained the vacancy, but she never took extra time to study anywhere but her apartment anymore, so it was bizarre. 

"Jesus, it's so quiet here," she spoke in a low, fussy mimp, which wasn't very true to her normal character. Perhaps she was just nervous.

God, her heart couldn't stop racing. Goodbye school... goodbye lukewarm coffee in the morning, goodbye comfortable clothes, goodbye music, goodbye video, goodbye female rights, goodbye...

_Three months. That's it. Then I can listen to The Gothic Archies all I want. You just have to stay calm._

Madellaine's hands were tepid, nearly shaking. This was terrifying, but in such a pleasurable way that she felt like a nymphomaniac for knowledge. The fact that she'd soon meet men and women five centuries older than she made the flares in her eyes cloudless and static. It almost didn't matter what she was giving up.

Ethel led her into the laboratory, and physicians did a quick med check on her. It went by very quickly, almost like a rich wash of color and snips of conversation before her senses, and she didn't know whether she should be wetting herself in mortal terror, or bursting from anticipation. She was the quintessential embodiment of a girl with butterfly-like nerves, though it felt more like hundreds of large, wooden birds flapping about in her abdomen. 

A questionnaire was given to her, and she answered as many questions as she could, though she felt like shouting at them to get it over with. She was given a small glass of a drink that tasted like a bleached-out fizzy-lemon concoction, and it quelled some of her nerves, which would have caused her to glitch like crazy.

A small chip was given to her and clipped on the inside of her corset, giving her the ability to wirelessly communicate and tap-out if necessary. This rame-like dream seemed like something out of a film. She didn't understand how the earth was merely a conglomeration of rocks, water, and boiling lava merely thousands of years ago, and yet some cheeky men and women made something like traveling through the volatile fabrics of space and time itself _possible_.

Flares of eclipsing light began to come from the mirrored prism she was seated into, and she had to keep herself from moving. Ethel waved at her, and she smiled in return, mouthing her thanks to her sister before she began to feel encumbrances of cramps and strains all over her body. Her clenched fists hindered what she was going through, and she hadn't expected such a smooth shift from her consciousness to utter lunar darkness.

It felt as if a celestial void had swallowed her whole. Every tingle in her unconscious body screamed out at her as if she were suspended in mid-air in a vast compass of a liquid, yet dry all the same chill, and it nearly felt like she was being stretched apart from all angles, every sliver of her frame in discomfort until at last, the transition had been completed.

And boy, was a certain legend surprised to see a strange woman motionless in his tower once he returned from the market.


	5. Free Thoughts of Kinship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I swear I am still working on Promise, my She-Ra fanfiction, but the next chapter for that is a long WIP. I'm trying to finish the rest of the first two episodes in the next chapter because there is a lot of material to cover and I'm not tryna make it like 100 chapters. God Save the Queen, on the other hand, also has a draft in progress, but I'm still yet to edit, proofread, and finish the rest of it as well. 
> 
> Also, I've got a lot of stamina for this fic at the moment lmfao.

"H-Hello? Mam'selle?"

This was unquestionably a first. 

The inhabitant of Notre Dame's bell tower hadn't been gone for more than _fifteen_ minutes, and now he was dealing with what he hoped to whatever deity existed wasn't a corpse.

Perhaps this... young woman, yes, a woman, was in trouble. Perhaps she had blundered her way up into his tower after a brawl or after an evening at the bar. What else could explain such a woman being in the monster's keep? 

And asleep, no less! Facedown, on the dusty wooden floorboards.

"Mademoiselle? A-Are you alright...?"

The man crouched low, though falteringly, having not known if he'd frighten the girl or not, and he listened firmly. 

A wildfire of eumoirous blood hastened to his cheeks when he picked up the candied patterns of her breathing. It was... so pure. Almost like a siren's solicitation to him, and the fluctuations of her beauty didn't miss his line of sight either. Gorgeously strange... So she _wasn't_ dead.

But she sure was something.

The man swept the dorsal portion of his hand athwart her forehead, though with care. It was cooled, but still... not right.

He'd feel like a sincere freak if he admired her in such a manner in such a vulnerable state, and so he decided to scoop up her head like a superfluous feathery ball in his hands. He slipped his arm under the crooks of her knees and hoisted her up without so much as a grunt, the strong madlad, and he attempted to walk her over to somewhere that would be much more... ample for her presumably drunken stupor. Certainly not his bed...

Luckily for him, before he was truly faced with such a predicament, he heard a delicate moaning come from the creature cradled in his arms. He quickly drew his hood over his face, not wanting to scare the poor, drunken thing.

Madellaine's vision severed, cleaving into a kaleidoscope of greys, of catharsis wafting through the streets of old Paris, and... red. Beautiful red. She felt static all over her unused muscles, and though she was dizzy as satan's dimwitted lackeys would have been, she noticed her equilibrium was way off. Her legs swayed, but there was pressure on the small of her back and in the pits of her knees as if she were being held. 

Not even five minutes into her experience and she was already being kidnapped. Splendid.

"What in the goddamn..." she mumbled, and though she was as still as a deer in the headlights, she felt as if she had just been on the Euthanasia Coaster and _survived_.

"Mademoiselle..." she heard a young man's voice droning around her resounding ears, racing around in circles as she attempted to get her bearings and see clearly. 

"Mmnn... who... where _am_ I?"

The man's face contorted in puzzlement as he saw her eyes nearly whirl in circles from her dizziness, "Y-You are in Notre Dame, mam'selle... I have found you in the bell tower. You have been asleep..."

"Oh, monsieur, I'm so sorry," she felt her face heat up against the man's chest and brought a hand to her fringed, nearly electrified primrose hair, "I... did you say, Notre Dame?"

"Yes..."

Her deep cornflower eyes blazed and raked open with a stuttered gasp, her buttermilk skin hushing in color, or had it been just a trick of the light? The man's lips were stitched together in patience as she attempted to gather her words. He silently worshipped her gentle prepossessing grace, that of a fallen angel, though he did it from the safety of his dark cloak. It was sinful but he hadn't a care about it when her eyes opened. He hadn't ever seen one crystal in the entirety of Paris that held a candle to such a sight for his sore eyes.

Eventually, Madellaine was granted the full range of her sights, and her jaw dissolved into her neckline as the parapets and deep gunmetal flushed walls of gothic stone became clear. It looked so much... sprightlier, fresher, yet ancient all the same. If she truly was in the fifteenth century, if that contraption had indeed worked, this cathedral would already have been hundreds of years old, though three-hundred was insignificant compared to nearly nine-hundred years.

She hadn't ever even seen the French bell-tower. It was closed off to the public when the bells had ripped their way out of usefulness; when Notre Dame simply became a tourist attraction instead of a handsome antiquated church. The man let her go, setting her back on the ground, though he extended a cautious arm in case she fell again. 

Madellaine was scarifying and scouring her brain for an answer as to why she was _here_. Not that she had any complaints in mind, but how on Earth had she spawned here instead of somewhere closer to her academy? Was it a psychological thing? Was she even really there, or was this a simulation? A wish gone awry?

Beautiful Notre Dame... She didn't care if this was a dream.

"So..." Madellaine peeked over her slender shoulder at this cloaked figure, and her heart felt a keen ague of something that wasn't fear, but something imperceptible. "Um... thank you, sir. Might I ask your name...?"

He tilted his head at an odd angle, and she gnawed at the top of her lip, thinking she had said something too odd. When he kept quiet, she felt dysphoria in her clogged throat, still lingering with that lemon flavor from before. 

"I-I'm Madellaine," she whispered, taking a small step away from him and towards the balcony. The skyline was barren, and the atmosphere was unscathed from the Eiffel Tower's fine range in the sky, and seeing such a recognizable face of Paris gone from the satellite felt so odd. She really _was_ seeing the past.

She didn't sound intoxicated. In fact, her steps worked against the sly stalemate she had previously been squeezed into, and every second that passed gave her better coordination of what she was doing. So what had happened to her?

"Madellaine..." he whispered, turning over the beautiful coined name across his tongue, and he ambled nervously over to her, this mysterious woman, the one called Madellaine. Beautiful. 

"Are you hurt?" the man inquired, trying to scrape for any form of clarification, "What happened to you?"

"I cannot say," her suspiration angling all around the cathedral's walls as her creamy, mysterious face moonbathed amidst the five-hundred-year-old gloaming sky. "For certain, at least... I must not be in my right mind. Thank you, though..."

The cloaked man gave a curt nod, though he kept at a respectable distance.

"Well, I... I apologize for the inconvenience," Madellaine nearly stumbled over her words, "I'll go."

"No," his voice nipped at the stuffy air, "I-It's alright, ma'am... I'd not want you to hurt yourself. You're welcome to stay here, in the church, if you so desire..."

"Stay?" her languid, yet alluring tones were like gala music, "Where?"

"I..." he tapped his fingers together, still tucked in his cloak like a turtle in a shell, "I'm sure I could fix you a place to sleep somewhere in the tower. I wouldn't want you... fainting on the streets. Who knows what could happen to you out there..."

She sucked on the inside of her left cheek. How compassionate of a man he was... she barely knew him, couldn't see his face or know his name, and yet he seemed so insistent on keeping her safe. She hadn't known such care from others on the streets before, certainly not like this, not for a stranger. His heart was pure and beat in tandem with her jugular, the throbbing on the side of her neck. 

"You're very kind," she smiled, "Thank you... I am new, here. Very new. So... it certainly means a lot that you're willing to be so hospitable."

She didn't know if his face had changed, because it was completely shrouded, and it irked her. Why was he concealing his face?

"You're welcome," he replied, "I... It's nice to meet you, Madellaine."

"Why are you covering your face, sir?" she squeaked, "I'd like to truly meet _you_."

"No, you wouldn't, heh..."

What? What was _that_ supposed to mean? Who wouldn't want to get to know such a cordial, merciful man?

"I highly disagree... but might I at least know your name?"

With sighs that took up hour-long minutes, four syllables were painfully choked out of this stranger's lips, and it left Madellaine's vitals in a tizzy to be corrected when her gasp nearly rearranged them.

"Quasimodo."

* * *

_What...? What?!?_

_Is this a prank? God damn it! Seriously? Are Sarousch and Ethel screwing with me?_

_Was that a common name, here? Wouldn't that be odd, then?_

Quasimodo scrunched up his face in his distress, and he pled to God that this woman did _not_ know Latin. Introductions were always awkward as all hell when his name had such a negative connotation. Half-formed. As true as it was, it was fucking _embarrassing..._

But that wasn't the cause of the girl's poisonously terrorized expression. No way. This wasn't true. Victor Hugo wrote _fiction!_

Though... he had never outright stated that on any of his novels. They were classed as such, but who was to say the melody of such a tale wasn't _true?_

_Or, maybe this is a coincidence._

_Oh, yeah, Madellaine, sure._ _It_ _'s not like the story took place in the bell tower of Notre Dame in the fifteenth century, with the main character being named Quasimodo, just like this man in front of me named Quasimodo... who lives in a bell tower of Notre Dame... in the fifteenth century._

Quasimodo. Such a saccharine name, so dear to her heart. Could it really be? 

"Really?" she whispered, her broken tone hard to read for the poor man, who thought he had just been recognized in the worst way. His name wasn't out of the mouths of the French people after he had saved the gypsy people from his adoptive fatherly figure, though that wasn't all that was gossiped of when it came to the ambiguous bell-ringer. She surely knew of his face, then, right? Was that why her inflections were so... astonished...?

"You know of me, then, don't you...?" he whispered.

"Quasimodo?" her face was emblazoned with admiration as she inched closer, demanding that he see just how abstruse it really coursed, "Bell ringer of Notre Dame?"

"Yes, mam'selle..."

She cupped her mouth with her trembling hands, nearly on the terminus of her composure. What to say? Was this _the_ Quasimodo, the one from her favorite tale?

"I...?" Quasi was puzzled beyond words, and so he didn't know what to say in response, "I know you must have heard rumors of me... Ugliest man in all of Paris...?"

"No..." she sent a trembling hand over the rim of his cloak and pulled it down, despite the man's fervent protests, and she gazed at the face of her hero... A friend that she'd known throughout her entire adolescence, yet whom she had never met. Was he not dead, then? By 1490, according to the novel's timeline, he would have been dead! Was Victor Hugo incorrect in his tale? Did he doctor it up to be more interesting? 

And it was clear that he could hear her, too! He wasn't deaf? How curious! How wonderful! What kind of fate had allowed this to pass? Was she dreaming...? She had so many unanswered questions, but she didn't want to seem too overbearing. The poor thing almost looked baffled to tears. She took a deep breath and flashed a loving, earnest smile.

He quickly shirked away to keep her from looking upon him, but he was greatly surprised when she cupped his face in her hands, studying the map of his unusual features. His eyes glistened when she cried in splendor and gave a slight laugh, though this time, it wasn't of mockery... But of delight. She was lucky her raw emotion didn't cause her to glitch.

She didn't care if this was a dream... he was beautifully imperfect.

This man had helped her through so much heartache and he hadn't even _known_ it. What to say to such a cornerstone of her life? If she told him of the novel, he'd surely think she was insane... But if Victor Hugo had been wrong about his novel, and this was indeed who her endeared book was based on, she couldn't say anything she thought to be true of him.

Eventually, she settled with something that made his heart bubble in wonderment, encapturing every flicker of adoration in this beautiful creature's eyes. 

She felt almost like a kindred spirit, a woman who _knew_ him, though he didn't think there were any savory rumors of him floating about in the streets that would make her look at him this way. Nobody had ever looked at him this way... Why was she looking at him with such a pacifist admiration?

"The rumors have lied to me. Your face is not ugly, Quasimodo... I don't know why you hide it."


	6. Futristic Lover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Quasimodo in this fic looks a lot like the one in the Disney film, mainly for a plot point very far down the line. Perhaps he is slightly taller and blends in with the other characters a bit more when it comes to design. For example, his arms aren't as big, his face isn't as animatedly wide, you get it. Not to correct his appearance, just for the sake of visualizing this better.
> 
> Getting the hang of these new acrylics lol.
> 
> This chapter kinda is just fluff, Madellaine settling down in her new life with her new friend. Nothing very eventful, but if you're still interested, here we goooo.

He was much different than she had imagined him to be.

Granted, Madellaine had delineated several diverse embodiments of her childhood hero, in her mind, on paper, in the little corners of her worksheets and exams. He ranged from short and stoic, to tall and powerful. It depended on the age of the illustrations, of the conceived memories. Perhaps her obsession would have freaked the man out, but she didn't know he was a real man.

Was he everything she thought he'd be? Or was this a shell of the character she fell in love with?

He was easier on the eyes than she had figured he'd be, and his fluctuations in tone never changed from warm and compassionate. Bassist, musical voice, blue eyes, red hair... She had pictured him a brunette, or perhaps a noirette, but red... really suited his features.

His lips looked smooth, like her vanilla soap, and his eyes, though one of them was hooked by a composition of skin she couldn't quite identify, were blazingly aglow, like a miner's treasure. They looked much like the pieces of jewelry for sale at the mall, at those small hole-in-the-wall ring shops. They'd most certainly be the shop's most costly treasures...

His hair certainly needed a good brush-through, but even so, it reminded her of sleek drapes, and he certainly used that to his advantage to hide his imperfections. His bangs were cut asymmetrically, and the most abundant of the locks tumbled over his bad eye. That must have hindered his eyesight...

His pigments were brilliant. He looked alive, exuberant, nothing like those old black and white films about him that she had seen. He wasn't a stillframe picture like that in her notebooks. The fact that he could see her, that he could hear _her_... it was like the eccentric waves of romanticized chimeras she had of him, glitteringly distant dreams that played in her head as soon as her face hit her pillow. It was everything she had ever dreamed of... but it had to be too good to be true. Perhaps this _was_ one of her dreams...

Now, Quasi _knew_ he was dreaming. He had led a perilously sheltered life in the indifferent confines of his homely cathedral, rarely even allowed to descend the steps to the ground floor. But this woman, albeit the second one he had really seen up close save for the nuns and a couple scattered about on the streets, diffused warmth, familiarity, and an incensed flow of beauty without even trying. He squandered any lustful solicitudes of women in his mind long _long_ ago; before he really had any chance to discover such thrills and sensations, but he still could appreciate the beauty all around him. But he had to promise himself that he would not fall in love again. The last time... hadn't gone over well for his already crumbled self-esteem. 

After all, not _every_ woman had to turn out to be a lover. She may even already have a man in her life.

_And for God's sake, you've only just met this woman! Get a grip..._

"Do you really mean that?" he whispered.

"I do," she smiled. His skin felt static to the touch, like the surfaces of those old television sets, latently buzzing on the glass surfaces that warped her fingers. Was that an effect of the technology allotting her to be there? It must have been, though she'd rather force herself to believe that it was an effect of how much he meant to her. Well, how much the one in the _book_ meant to her. This was a stranger... 

A pleasant, familiar, winsome stranger.

"But, you barely know me... why are you being so kind, mademoiselle?" 

Madellaine should have expected this... Of course, his vacillations on his appearance weren't highlighted much in the traditional best-seller, though that must have gone without saying.

She knew that the man would need someone to mend his confidence. She didn't know if Esmeralda was real in this world, nor if her fate had been the same in the novel, but if the two truly did survive Jean Claude's lustful madness, she wondered if they had ended up being friends... or more, considering his feelings.

Or were the two yet to die? Was she living in the window of time just before the true inauguration of the tale, before the man met the woman of his dreams and died after trying to save her? She didn't know. She didn't know anything about her surroundings. But she knew she couldn't look it up or call her sister in her wonderment. She was on her own now.

"Because... it just seemed like kindness would have been long overdue for you..." she felt scorching air under her lungs; as if they would swell, inflate like balloons and she'd float away. "And I am not a liar. I wouldn't ever feel comfortable if someone believed something so... unreasonable."

Unreasonable...? That he was ugly? Well, _that_ was new. 

"You're... different," he said, leaning his elbows against the balustrade, ripe to topple beneath the pressure the two put onto it.

"No, not really," she twiddled her thumbs, her painted nails, courtesy to Ethel. Shit. She had forgotten to take her nail polish off. Oh well... _Ancient Egyptians_ dyed their fingernails with henna, didn't they?

Well, henna wasn't _green_. Thanks, Ethel.

"Did you stain your fingernails?" Quasi half-whispered.

"No, my sister," the wind disengaged a few pieces of her hair, and they flew depressingly in the draft like gilded larks, silent, unfeeling. "Is it odd?"

"Yes," he smiled slightly, "But... that's not a bad thing."

_He's so... pleasant. He's... everything and nothing like I've imagined..._

"Paris is beautiful this time of year- er- _day_..." her cheeks, the skin on her chest, laved over with a muted peach color, and only the other noticed the temerities it staked against her. She really was strange. Nearly every interaction he'd had with her wasn't ordinary. He'd found her face down in his tower, seemingly out of nowhere, and she wasn't able to tell how. She had told him he _wasn't_ ugly, which he figured was the strangest of all, and her idiosyncrasies and inflections of speech didn't seem quite... articulated. 

And... she spoke to him as if she had known him for years. 

He almost... _didn't_ feel so out of place around her. 

"Yes. It's grown grey, though, after all these years."

"The world is bleak," Madellaine's chest twitched dryly, and her slate-blue eyes ensnared the solar flares that screamed over Notre Dame, "But it's moments like this, kind people like you, that make it worth it. Thanks again, you know, for allowing me to stay. I'm in a tough spot right now."

Madellaine spoke almost with the wisdom of thousands of archangels, and it was peculiarly soothing to the bell ringer how familiarly she seemed to hold him in her tone. His lip twitched, and for a fleeting moment, he had forgotten to shroud his face in the trustworthy confines of his hair. He forgot that he was a disgrace to society.

"Of course... Notre Dame is always welcoming to the wandering tourist, or..." he didn't really know how to classify her, so he just twirled his finger around awkwardly for a moment, "You."

Madellaine's giggle proved to be just as enchanting as the rest of her was, and he nearly disregarded how rude it had been of him to refer to her in such a way. "Well... I'm grateful."

"Are you hungry? Tired?" he asked, and his face peeked out of his hair just a little more.

"I'm quite tired, actually... you wouldn't mind if I slept?"

"Of course not," he smiled gingerly, "Come inside, I'll fix you a place to sleep."

Madellaine's facial composition was situated on something, and he saw her benumbed lips shuffle, though he couldn't decipher her words. 

"What was that?" 

She broached the tips of her fingernails against her pocket, and the fabric split unimportantly under her control, "Would you mind if, um... I-I could be near to you? Not next to you, heh, I just mean, you know... close. I don't like being alone."

This woman quite precisely had told him she needed to be close to him. Close to him. He had no coherent thoughts, no words through his searing bafflement, and so all he could manage was a single "Okay."

* * *

Fallen angel. That is what she must have been.

Madellaine was quite like a martian to Quasimodo. She just... seemed metaphysical, not _right_ , but his inoffensive suspicions of her carried no pessimistic connotation. This woman should be weeping at the sight of him, she should scorn him and laugh at him, but this transcendental creature spoke to him as if he was an equal. It made his heart simmer at the thought of any final remnants of human good. That a stranger didn't have to pierce through the ice and snow of his misleading appearance to grow to... respect him. She truly sounded like she respected him.

That night, he guided her over to her own sleeping mat, a quite viscous and generous feathered cushion accented by blankets and a small glass bottle of water. Madellaine had truly thought she'd employ her first medieval night on the old Parisian streets, but thanks to him... she wouldn't have to.

One query that plagued her was _why_. Why had she woken in Notre Dame? Had she truly taken form in the tract that was where her university should have stood and floundered her way to the church? That must have been it. But she didn't remember the journey.

She still had her small leather bag, a messenger bag that fit in well enough with the world around her, which carried sleepwear, a toothbrush, her book, all of the things she needed for the journey. Once Quasi bid her a good night and singed out the candle's flame between their nooks, she changed her clothing to something more comfortable and settled in.

She would have reached for her novel, but... the subject of her comfort was settled a suitable amount of measures away from her, and though it was dark, she could get a good look at him. She rubbed her eyes, scrubbing away the phosphenes that tingled her optical nerves, and opened her doe eyes to watch her idol sleep.

She stared at him. 

Her heart glitzened in the stelliferous cloak of stars hanging precariously above them, and she wondered if his had done the same when he met her. He almost sat at a broiling, muffled luminosity, even as he slept. His shimmer must have been a product of his kindness trying to seep out of his tottering body. She couldn't peel her eyes away from him.

Even if he wasn't the man from her stories, he was still something to her. He had started a new term in her concentration. 

She hadn't met him properly until yet a few hours before, but she knew she admired him.

* * *

"Madellaine? I-It's morning and I've fetched some tea for you if you- eek!"

Quasi's whiplash when he saw his new friend dressed so little nearly cracked his neck in two. She must have forgotten that her normal sleeping attire wasn't quite appropriate for a fifteenth-century setting.

It wasn't provocative at all, at least not to the millennial eye, but her shorts that barely reached the tips of her knees and the short tank-top that hugged onto her would have seemed like _undergarments_ to him. 

"Hmm...?" she wrenched her sleep-lacquered eyes open and groaned, "What's the matter?"

"Ah, I... forgive me, I... You're _nude_..."

Madellaine looked down, seeing her fairly obvious granite-toned clothing, and she contorted her brow. 

"No, I'm not...?" she giggled, "What makes you say that?"

"Ah-i-it's just that... w-well..."

He nearly tore the skin on the back of his neck with how much he was scraping at it, craning his head away from the girl desperately. He was _flustered_ , and it was... kind of adorable.

"It's just what I wear to sleep, Quasi..." she spoke, stifling her laughter with the dorsal portion of her hand. 

"O-Oh, I... well, I didn't know, heh, I-I just figured w-women wore _nightgowns_ or something... I've never seen a woman asleep before..."

Oh. Shit.

_This isn't the twenty-first century, Madellaine! Of course, he's flustered, you're practically naked by their standards!_

"Ah, r-right," she subtly yanked the sheet over herself, and now it was her turn to be disconcerted. "Well, I'm going to get dressed..."

"O-Okay, uh, m-meet me on the balcony when you are? I've made tea..."

"Of course, heh..."

She eased her cares by slipping her underdress over her and attempting to secure her overdress on as well, though she had no _clue_ how to fasten her corset. She didn't want to ask him for assistance, she was already embarrassed _enough_. But...

"U-Um, Quasi...? Can you help me?"

"Uhh..."

"I'm dressed now, don't worry."

"Ah- good... n-not that it wasn't a-alright for you to be dressed comfortably, o-or that I'm judging you, or anything, b-but-"

Madellaine's eyes were foxed, though the whites of her scleras glimmered teasingly, like fresh milk. 

"I know what you mean, silly."

* * *

* * *


End file.
